General Motors’ 2022 Super Bowl ad “Dr. EV-il” summons viewers to ponder the issue of climate change. The ad introduces the company’s electric vehicles (EV), apparently committing it to a “net-zero” future. In the same breath, GM subtly admits that it will use what is purported to be a looming catastrophe to its advantage.
The rise of woke capitalism cannot be sufficiently explained in terms of placating coastal leftists, ingratiating left-liberal legislators, or avoiding the wrath of activists. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. February 10, 2022.)
I don't believe woke capitalism can any longer be sufficiently explained in terms of placating coastal leftists, ingratiating liberal-left legislators, or avoiding the wrath of activists. Rather, as wokeness has escalated and taken hold of corporations and states, it has become a demarcation device, a shibboleth for cartel members to identify and distinguish themselves from their non-woke competitors, who are to be starved of capital investments. (Talk delivered at the Common Sense Society Conference and Gala, January 28, 2022.)
Now woke ideology has led to the resignation of the most famous academic alive: the psychologist, best-selling author, and public intellectual Jordan Peterson, who announced in the National Post his decision to retire from his position as tenured full professor at the University of Toronto. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. January 26, 2022.)
The Great Reset combines resets in all conceivable domains of human life: economic, environmental, geopolitical, governmental, industrial, technological, social, and individual. (Presented at "The Great Reset?" Hillsdale College's Center for Constructive Alternatives. Sunday, November 7, 2021, at 4 PM. Click hereor on title.)
The Great Reset combines resets in all conceivable domains of human life: economic, environmental, geopolitical, governmental, industrial, technological, social, and individual. (Presented at "The Great Reset?" Hillsdale College's Center for Constructive Alternatives. Sunday, November 7, 2021, at 4 PM.)
The Great Reset, then, is not merely a conspiracy theory; it is an open, avowed, and planned project, and it is well underway. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. November 3, 2021).
A specter is haunting the world: the increasing prospect of a new totalitarianism. Unlike the specter of communism, this specter originates from those in power and not from underground revolutionaries—although communism may always be an undertaking of elites. Rather than haunting only Europe, this specter casts its long shadow across the future of all humanity, such that one wonders how one might plan, if at all, for this future. Delivered at the LP Mises Caucus Take Human Action Tour. Fairfax, VA. October 2, 2021. (Click here or on title.)
It is dusk in the sleepy town of Zelienople, PA. I’m sitting in a chair beside my mother’s bed. I gaze at her, and then out the window. Clouds barely mask a sinking sun, setting over the quietude of quaint country houses, fields of grass, woods, and the church she used to attend. Mom is in a deep sleep and can no longer open her eyes. Her breaths are shallow. She occasionally emits a very slight and tremulous murmur. It seems as if she teeters on a great ledge, unevenly balanced between two worlds.
A specter is haunting the world: the increasing prospect of a new totalitarianism. Unlike the specter of communism, this specter originates from those in power and not from underground revolutionaries—although communism may always be an undertaking of elites. Rather than haunting only Europe, this specter casts its long shadow across the future of all humanity, such that one wonders how one might plan, if at all, for this future. (Delivered at the LP Mises Caucus Take Human Action Tour. Fairfax, VA. October 2, 2021.)
The covid regime has extended and deepened the epistemic crisis inaugurated by postmodernism and practical postmodernism. Science has devolved into a series of non sequiturs backed by force. Science has become postmodern. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. September 16, 2021.)
The West's rush to embrace the Chinese regime's bizarre lockdown method of disease control exposed just how little Western regimes actually care about human rights or the rule of law. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. September 10, 2021.)
A specter is haunting the world: the increasing prospect of a new totalitarianism under the extended covid response. Unlike the specter of communism, or the specter of “dissent” to communist dictatorship that Václav Havel ironically identified in his groundbreaking essay “The Power of the Powerless,”[1] this specter originates from those in power and not from the revolutionary or the powerless.[2] And rather than haunting only Europe or Eastern Europe, this specter casts its long shadow across the future of all humanity, such that one wonders how one might plan, if at all, for this future. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. August 18, 2021.)
In the fall of 2016, I was a left communist. As any Marxist can tell you, ideology can blind one to the insights that might disrupt one’s political adhesions. Only it was Marxist ideology itself that blinded me. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. June 6, 2021.)
We should be quite skeptical when states impose the opinion of minority groups on the majority through special programs in schools and elsewhere. Such programs likely involve “positive discrimination” against particular groups, consistent with state objectives. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. June 30, 2021.)
